Christoph Mueller, outgoing CEO of Malaysia Airlines Berhad, confirmed this week that four of its six leased Air Lease A350s will be used for the carrier’s twice-daily Kuala Lumpur–London flights. The other two aircraft will be used for cover in case of maintenance issues, and to operate an existing Asia-Pacific regional route.
The main rationale for ordering A350s was to replace the A380s on London flights, Mueller explained. However, this will not occur immediately. The first few A350s initially will be used on shorter Asian routes, so the carrier can gain more experience with the aircraft’s operation. The airline also does not want a mixed fleet on the London flights, so it will wait until it has four A350s before it allocates them to the route meaning the A380s will be phased out all at once by June 2018.
Malaysian Airlines attempted to sell two of its six A380s in 2015 using this news service (Airline Economics). Alas we were not up to the task and no buyers came forward, but as mentioned over a year ago – potential buyers such as THY, IAG or Emirates could get a good deal as Malaysian has in-house capability to reconfigure the A380s to meet customer requirements, so the cost of the aircraft could be low.